I would love to hear from anyone who can give me advice on dog painting. I would love to paint the our dogs but don't have a clue where to start, one is a Cockerpoo black and white, mostly black, and the other a Poochon brown and white, mostly white. I would like to paint them in oils, either with or without an acrylic underpainting, whichever is easiest. This is a completely different style of painting for me, and I am hopeless at sketching so I'm not expecting it to be easy. I would be happy just to learn how to paint their faces at this point. Any advice no matter how small would be much appreciated. Thank you!

    I don't know if this will help, but for my recent colored pencil drawing of our dog, I used all 24 colors in the set and slowly built up overlapping colors layer by layer without resorting all the way to black immediately. This allowed me to slowly build up her sweet little face to make it easier to capture her likeness. I'm not sure how useful this would be in paint, but I wonder glazing would be a good way to build your painting.

      dracula Thank you, anything helps. I did notice you'd used several colours but not as many as 24! Wow. I understand its important to build up layers, another thing I managed to find out is white fur isn't white at all and that its important to leave pure colours til last. I imagine you started with photos then a sketch, but what order did you continue, was it eye first, fur, nose, then more fur?
      No doubt I'll need to get some different brushes but that's OK. I expect I will need to do a lot of practice before I can capture their specific likeness, I really want to do them justice. And I will think about glazing also. Thanks again Drac, much appreciated.
      If anyone can help further, I'd love to hear from you.

          TheLandscapePainter I did have a photo reference and the girl herself roaming around the house. I started with basic shapes to make sure everything was in the right place and then started slowly building up the colors and refined the shapes and texture as I went. You are correct, white fur usually isn't white (depending on the lighting). The only thing that is usually white would be the brightest highlights, like glint in the eyes, or the like.

              Helen I am sure Pam (flippergirlpaints) could impart some great information on painting your doggies.

                6 days later

                Good morning Helen! I did see you post this question 10 days ago, and I have been a bit busy but really wanting to answer for you! The basics of my pet paintings goes - 1-sketch, 2-underpainting (now done with black gesso - VERY watered down like water colors. you will need only a small dot of paint lol!), 3-start with oils on the eyes nose and sometimes ears areas, 4-continue to build up color layers - but saving white for LAST. The underpainting in gesso is a real help! When I do it, I change my reference photo to black and white so it makes the values easier to see and apply. So without going into too much more explanation here, I will tell you a few of the paintings I have posted where you can see more and get more info. "Chase" is a good one to see the underpainting in gesso. "Maximus" gives a good explanation of my process. "Brown Horse" and "Sinoceratops" both have explanations AND STAGES PHOTOS. Although those are older and the underpainting process I used was with thinned oils and not gesso. The GESSO is waaayyy better. My only other advice is to just finally go for it! I looked forward to your masterpiece! Let me know if there is anything else.

                  About the sketch - I think I left that out! I do not want to worry about spending time on getting the proportions and stuff all good. Even though I can draw very well. I print out a black and white photo of the dog - to scale; as in usually takes up the 8.5x11 piece of paper entirely so I can transfer it to 11x14 or 9x12. I can not imagine you want to go bigger than that right now. I slip a piece of transfer paper between my canvas and the print out and trace the eyes, nose, and outline shape of the dog. No thinking or measuring required!

                    flippergirlpaints Thank you so much, that is really helpful. I'm not expecting great things but I am determined to have a go. I really want to do a top notch job of it and I know that's not gonna happen so that alone has been putting me off. Animal painting looks so complicated it's a real challenge for me. Your tip on tracing is great for me. Thanks again.

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